These mounds of kelp? Get rid of them, demands St. Bride's Harbour Authority

For more than twoyears, moundsof kelp have been composting in fourlarge piles around the harbour in St. Bride's on the Cape Shore.

About 10,000 cubic meters of kelp wasdredged from the harbour in early 2017. An L-shaped breakwater constructed years beforewas,in effect, trapping kelp in the harbour. When the tide went out, the smell came in.

The harbour was dredged, the breakwater removed and stinking piles ofkelp werestockpiled on land around the harbour.

Aloysius McGrath, president of the St. Bride's Harbour Authority, wants the mounds removed.

You could not stand the smell, it was just like sewage.- Aloysius McGrath

"You could not stand the smell, it was just like sewage," he said.

"It was just like somebody was to send out a vac truck from St. John's and go around the whole Cape Shore and suck everybody's septic system out and then find a place on the shoulder of the road and dump it out."

The mounds of kelp, nowovergrown with vegetation and looking like green hills,are located on property owned by Fishery and Oceans, Small Craft Harbours.

Bill Goulding is regional director and says the harbour basin periodically experiencesaccumulations of kelp.

"Back in 2016, it got really worse than its ever been before and the kelp got particularly persistent with the odourthroughout the community and it extended into the summer, into the fall and winter and it was really problematic," said Goulding.

McGrathsaid it was so bad that people near the water's edge would plug their noses and have to quickly leave the area.

"It's like really an insult that was done to the people of St. Bride's and the Cape Shore, really," he said.

Small Craft Harbours paid $1.25 million over the past 20 years to dredge the harbour.

Goulding says the money went towards six big jobs. Removing the east breakwater that had been trapping the kelp in the basin,cost approximately $200,000.

When the kelp was first brought ashore, McGrathsaid Goulding told him that once the kelp drained, it would be removed.

McGrathsaid he feels that was a promise not kept.

Small Craft Harbours looking for a place to haul kelp

Goulding says they looked at hauling it to a facility that accepts organic waste in the town of Sunnyside, but it was deemed too expensive. A nearby landfill he says, is closed.

Goulding is hoping to find a solution in the next few months.

"One of the things we're looking at, one of the things we have done elsewhere, is where the province may have a quarry that is inactive and it could benefit from some material that would help reclaim the quarry," he said.

However the kelp is removed, it can't come soon enough for McGrath.

"We got no parking space down here. There's always someone into an argument about parking," he said.

"We could have a nice big parking lot, we could have it graded off and have a place for hauling up boats."

Meanwhile, the kelp mounds are gettingslightly smaller as they decompose and people haul some of material away to fertilize their gardens.

The smell has also abated with the removal of the east breakwater.

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